"Robin, I think I just asked you to marry me."

She looked at him with a puzzled face. "I heard you, Patrick," she retorted carefully, "I'm just not sure I believed you. I mean, we are talking about Dr. Patrick Drake, the king of bachelors. You'll have to forgive me if I'm confused."

"I just declared my undying love for you, and you're questioning my commitment? I thought you understood that I am in love with you, that I want to share my life with you."

"I've heard this line before about the apartment. We both are under a lot of stress given the drama of the past 12 hours. I don't want you to propose to me and regret it later. You've taken things back in the past, but this one, I don't think our relationship could recover."

He reached for her hand, brushing his thumb over her knuckles until it rested on the ring. "This ring should tell you everything you need to know," he said softly. "It's not just any ring, you know? It belonged to my mother. There is no single material thing in this world that means more to me. It's all I really have left, and I am entrusting it to you, just like I have done with my heart."

A single tear slipped down her cheek, the first one she had shed since entering General Hospital. Not even the terror of the hostage situation had brought on a similar wave of terror. "Do you mean it?" she asked, almost pleadingly. "Do you really want to marry me?"

He nodded silently, his own eyes wet. "I want to be your husband more than anything in the world, more than I've ever wanted anything actually. Other than being a doctor, you're the only thing I've ever fought to have in my entire life. Don't take that away from me."

"I could never do that."

"Are you saying…?"

"I'm saying," she giggled, interrupted by his lips on hers. She opened her mouth to allow him to deepen the kiss. He rendered her speechless for a few moments, not an easy feat by any measure. When he finally broke away for air, she finished saying what she needed to say. "Yes."

"Sorry to bring you back over here," Mac stated as he led Elizabeth and Nikolas back toward the ambulance where Dillon and Lulu were still huddled. "Lulu is in pretty bad shape. Dillon is in there with him, he seems to be keeping her head above water for now. He wanted you to come."

"Hey, Lulu," Nikolas said as he leaned over the edge of the vehicle, reaching out to cover his sister's hand.

She looked at him distantly, almost as if she didn't recognize him for a moment. "Nikolas?"

"It's me, Lu," he assured her. "Elizabeth is with me."

"Hi, sweetheart," Elizabeth greeted her warmly, her maternal instincts automatically kicking in. "Why don't I come sit with you for awhile so that Dillon can help Nikolas with something?"

Lulu nodded slowly. "Okay," she agreed before shifting her eyes to Dillon. "Just hurry."

"I will," he promises, kissing her forehead tenderly. "I promise I'll hurry."

Nikolas and Dillon left the two women alone, walking to the edge of the chaos to steal a minute alone. "How bad did it get?" Nikolas inquired worriedly, well aware of the fear in the young man's eyes.

"She couldn't hear me, Nikolas," he uttered. "I was there, trying to get through to her, and she couldn't hear me. Mac wanted her to answer a few questions again, and she lost focus. I could feel her literally breaking down in my arms, and there was nothing I could do to stop it. I couldn't save her."

Dillon turned around, stomping his foot with frustration. He laced his fingers behind his head and squeezed his eyes tight, unsure of what else to say. Nikolas watched him with concern, knowing what was going through Dillon's mind. "You did save her," Nikolas told him. "You are the one that got through to her. No one else would have been able to do that. Dillon, she needs you more than ever. I need you to be strong for her, to be there for her. I am not going to be enough."

"I went in there and gave my life for Lulu. Nikolas, standing out there, I realized that she is everything to me. For so long, I thought Georgie was the love of my life, but your little sister, she is it for me. She is where my heart begins and ends. You don't have an epiphany like that and let it go without the fight of your life."

"Then, you go and tell her that. You tell her exactly how you feel because that is going to be what she lives for. She has been in love with you for a long time. All she wants is to be with you."

The blonde man looked at him, biting hard on his bottom lip. He didn't say anything as he left Nikolas alone, slowly walking back toward the ambulance. Nikolas looked at his feet and said a silent prayer to his mother, asking her to watch over them both. By the time he looked up again, Dillon was sprinting. A second later, he disappeared out of sight only to be replaced by Elizabeth a few moments later.

"How is she?"

Elizabeth shrugged. "It's so hard to tell, Nik. I wish that I could come and tell you that she was going to be fine, but you know that I can't lie to you. I'm scared for her."

"You know, I just told Dillon that he needed to go tell her how he felt because that is going to be what she lives for. Looking at him, I knew that he was in love with her and that she has been waiting to hear that for so long."

"If tonight has taught me anything it is that honesty is important," she said. "I've told so many lies over the past few months, most notably about the baby. I'm going to have to start telling the truth, just like Dillon. It's not going to be easy."

"Nothing worth it was ever easy," he mused.

"What does that mean?"

"Nothing."

"I know you, Nikolas," she reminded him. "I know when you're hiding something, and right now, there is a whole lot that you're not saying."

"Please, not now," he implored, wanting to push her away for the first time in as long as he could remember. They had been through so much that night, and he wasn't sure that he wanted to add life-altering revelations to the list. What he had to say not only had the power to change his life but also three people that he loved more than anything. "I can't say it."

"Then, I will," she said boldly. "You're thinking about the kiss, wondering what it meant. Nikolas, I felt it, too."

"Emily and Lucky…"

"Tonight changed everything for me, Nikolas. It made me realize my priorities and reminded me just how much I believe in fate. It wasn't Lucky that was trapped with me, it was you."

Nikolas looked around him until his eyes met her familiar gaze. "I don't want to lose anything."

"You could be gaining everything."

Lulu was staring vacantly at the blanket across her lap when Dillon rejoined her in the back of the ambulance. "Hey," he murmured, kissing her forehead as he slid next to her.

"Hi," she said with a small voice. "I'm so tired."

"Do you want me to take you somewhere so that you could get some rest?"

She shrugged. "I don't know. Maybe I should stay until Lucky and Emily are out. Or maybe I should go back to Wyndamere with Nikolas. Why is it suddenly so hard to make a decision?"

Dillon pushed hair away from her forehead. "Why don't you come home with me? I'll take you back to the mansion, and you can just sleep."

"I don't know," she hesitated. "Georgie might get mad."

"Lulu, I don't give a damn about Georgie!" he shouted, causing her to recoil slightly. "I only care about you. I am in love with you, I want to be with you. No one else matters to me right now except you."

"Promise you won't leave me."

"I already promised you, and now, I'm promising you that I won't break my vow. I will tell you that as many times as you need to hear it, but you need to know that it is not something that is going to change. I fully intend on spending the rest of my life with you, and considering that I'm only 19, that's a pretty long time."

"Take me home," she pleaded urgently. "I don't want to be here anymore."

Taking her hand, he helped her from the car and led her away from the group. Mac stared wordlessly as the young couple quietly left the scene, clinging to nothing but each other. He thought about the days when Dillon had looked at his daughter like he was gazing at the young blonde. He couldn't remember a time when the young Quartermaine had ever stared at Georgie quite like he was looking at Lulu now.

Dillon gave Nikolas a brief explanation, allowing her a moment alone to say goodbye to Elizabeth. After hugging her brother, Lulu followed Dillon toward the waiting town car and then eventually into the Quartermaine mansion. Alice nodded worriedly when Dillon said that they were going upstairs. He sent Lulu ahead of him so that he could get details about his uncle. Once he had heard about Alan's surgery, he followed her upstairs to his bedroom. She was collapsed in the middle of his spacious bed when he quietly closed the door behind him. Crawling in beside her, he wrapped his arms around her body and held her as if her life depended on. For all Dillon knew, maybe it did.

"I'm bored," Emily complained loudly, drumming her fingers on the wood surface of the credenza.

"Yeah, me too," Lucky agreed, kicking his feet against the base of the same piece of furniture.

"Shut up," Craig growled.

"No, thanks, Mr. One," Emily smiled. "I quite prefer to talk. I mean, if we're just going to sit here and wait for our untimely demise, I'd like to at least pass the time quickly. There's nothing like waiting for death."

"I've had enough. I've told you before, now shut up."

"Like I said, no thanks," Emily shot back.

"Seriously, man, your idle threats aren't working anymore," Lucky stated plainly. "Don't you have anything new to say? I mean, we all know that the lobby is rigged and that you plan to kill us. We know you're waiting for the vault to open or whatever. Who cares? Your game is tried and tired."

"Well, aren't you cocky?"

"I am a cop," Lucky reminded him. "Besides, I don't have anything to lose at this point, remember? Either way, we die. You've made that clear."

Emily shrugged. "In fact, why are we even sitting here? Since I'm going to die, I could at least make a run for it."

"We could do it together," Lucky ventured, adding a false note of excitement to his voice. "We could hold hands and run toward the door. We'd go out in a blazing glory, and everyone would think of us as lovelorn heroes."

"Well, I've always thought that if I was going to die, I'd at least want it to be interesting," she said. "I mean, this is a lot more newsworthy than cancer. I was in that bus crash that would have been good. Or the epidemic, that was noteworthy. Not to mention the train crash, I mean, the media coverage on that was insane. But this, the hostage situation, something tells me that this one is going to take the cake."

"A doctor and a cop? A rich girl and a town legacy? You know that they are going to be all over it that angle," Lucky grinned. "We'll be sainted."

"Then, let's do it!" she giggled, clapping her hands giddily as she jumped up. She looked around the room at her brother before reaching for Lucky's hand. "But before we do, Mr. One, I want to tell you thank you. If it wasn't for you, we would have never realized how we felt."

Lucky looked at her, knowing that it was the only honest thing they had said in quite some time. "Without you, we might still be hung up on our exes. Now, we can move on to our new life with each other."

Emily was the one to look at him next, getting the hidden meaning in what he had just said. She knew that it would be difficult to tell Elizabeth and Nikolas everything that had happened, but they couldn't go back. No one had expected for it to take something this catastrophic to finally bring them together, but it had. And there was no way either of them would let it slip through their fingers.

"Stop!" Craig yelled, pointing the gun straight at Lucky. Loading the bullet into the barrel over the silver revolver, he smiled menacingly. "This ends now for you."

"I don't think so," Emily said smartly as Jason stepped behind Craig.

The empty popping of a bullet going into the British man's back was the only sound in the room for a few moments before he gurgled his final words, "Now." Within seconds, the entire room was in chaos as the Metrocourt exploded, sending violent flames against the eerily calm dawn sky.